1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a light and/or signaling device for motor vehicles and, more particularly, to a lighting and/or signaling device adapted to control the activation of parking/DRL light and a proximately located turn signal light so that the turn signal light is not diminished by the light from the parking/DRL light.
2. Description of the Related Art
In some vehicle markets, a white park lamp is often combined with an amber front turn signal lamp. This is acceptable because the park lamp is allowed to turn off when the front turn signal is activated. The problem comes about when this same configuration is proposed for the North American market. In North America, once the park lamp is on, it must remain on by regulation. So in the case where a white park lamp and an amber front turn lamp is optically combined, when the front turn lamp turns on, the amber color is diminished due to the white park lamp. This results in a configuration in which the perception is that the park lamp remains on throughout the activation of the front turn, but the turn lamp amber color may not appear as purely amber.
One solution to this problem was that the park lamp was converted to an amber park lamp or the white park lamp was separated from the front turn lamp for the North American market.
FIG. 1 is a front view of a generic vehicle 3. The vehicle 3 is equipped with parking lights 4, which are also used as daytime running lights (DRL). The parking or DRL lights 4 function primarily to make the vehicle 3 more visible to third parties, such as the drivers of other vehicles, during the daytime when functioning as a DRL, and at night when functioning as a parking light and the DRL is a higher intensity function than the parking light function. In other words, it should be understood that the park function is different from the DRL function even though they are they same lamp.
The vehicle 3 is also equipped with headlights 5, which serve a different primary function, namely, to illuminate external objects at night, and make them visible to the person driving vehicle 3. The headlights 5 generally consume more power than do the parking or DRL lights 4. The vehicle 3 is further equipped with turn signals 6, which indicate a direction of an upcoming turn by the vehicle 3.
The parking lights 4 are commonly white in color, and they are often illuminated whenever the vehicle 3 is operational. The turn signals 6 are commonly amber in color, and one of them is illuminated by flashing during a turn, but generally not at other times when the vehicle 3 is being driven.
This particular combination of white parking lights 4 with amber turn signals 6, together with the constant illumination of the white parking lights 4, can affect the visibility of the turn signals 6.
That is, the white light emitted by a parking light 4, which is adjacent to an amber turn signal 6, can dilute, as it were, the light of the amber turn signal 6. This dilution can make the amber turn signal 6 less visible. By analogy, a street lamp in a parking lot will appear very bright at midnight, when it is the only light source present. However, at noon the street light appears far less bright because another light source is present, namely, the sun, which dilutes the light of the street lamp. It may be thought that the dilution of the turn signal can be reduced by extinguishing the white parking lights 4 while the amber turn signal 6 operates. However, government regulations in some localities prohibit this.
In addition, the arrangement of FIG. 1 requires equipment which can be viewed as complex. As the exploded view or inset 7 in FIG. 2 shows, each parking or DRL lights 4 requires a housing 4B, a lens 4C, and a light source 4D, such as a light-emitting diode, or LED. Similarly, each turn signal 6 can require its own housing 6B, its own lens 6C, and its own light source 6D. Additional equipment to that shown in the simplification of FIG. 2 can also be required. All these items add cost and logistical complexity to the manufacturing and assembly of the vehicle 3.
What is needed, therefore, is a signaling and/or lighting system and method that overcomes one or more of the problems in the prior art.